


A little too much chocolate is just about right.

by practicality



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Inspired By Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 03:18:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4812947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/practicality/pseuds/practicality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A birthday present. Just a couple of shenanigans at the Order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kandayuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kandayuu/gifts).



> (I wrote Jeryy with they pronouns, I hope no one minds too much.)

It had been the buzz around HQ all morning.

Finders passed whispers to scientists and nurses, who paused in their tasks to glance at the clock. Murmurs snaked through all the facilities, falling through the barely parted lips of conspirators and the desperate. Rumors of the sightings of scientists not seen for weeks emerging from the mountains of work in the science departments only added fuel to the kindling fire.

_Competition_ , everyone seemed to be thinking as they eyed anyone shuffling towards the hall to the cafeteria. Anyone with the misfortune of needing to take that passage could feel the weight of those stares on their back, but would also be treated to a remarkable smell: hot and a little smothering, sweet and rich and somehow airy underneath the thickness. Even if the news hadn’t reached them, they would know what had everyone on the edge of their seats all day:

Jeryy was baking today.

To be more specific, Jeryy had been experimenting lately. Something like a little influence or advice from Komui had encouraged the Order’s best chef to stray from their formidable mental library of culinary experience and to instead test some things of their own. They hadn’t stopped making meals to order, nor had they enlisted any particular help from anyone else in the kitchen. All the same, word was starting to go around that, perhaps the Order had never been meant to study Innocence and theologic-scientific theories as much as it had been meant to house the birth of a culinary era for the modern age.

These rumors did not impress Reever Wenhamm of the science department, who it was said continued to bar Chief Officer Lee into his office until his work was completed for the day.

It seemed random exactly when Jeryy would choose to dole out their creations onto the waiting plates and trays of hungry soldiers in the holy war, but every time, without fail, they’d brought something forward to satisfy every craving and titillate every palate. Some of these had been sworn life-changers, though not everyone always got the chance to try. Supplies in the building were limited until restocking days, and they could only make the same dish so many times. Desserts were a bit easier to handle and distribute, and they were almost unfailingly popular with most everyone in the Order. They tended to come out in batches or perfectly equal slices, which would be claimed quickly (one to a person only) and then gone for long stretches in between.

Today, though, there was a second strange rumor floating around: Jeryy had been upset early in the morning about the disappearance of one of his cakes. They hadn’t abandoned the kitchen over this, but for an entrepreneurial few, there _could_ be great rewards for the capture of the thief.

While this rumor was making the rounds alongside the first, back in the Order kitchens and from behind the counter, one pair of two different hands were reaching up from underneath the counter for the last slice left behind Jeryy’s back. The finder at the front of the line on the other side of the counter looked on wistfully as the fingertips of the hands caught on the rim of the plate and pulled it away from him towards the far side of the ledge, but he recognized those hands and sleeves and hid a faint smile behind the bandages across his face.

The plate hung over the edge a second, and then tipped over the edge with one more tug. Though he strained his ears, the finder could hear no crash or any noise except for what could have been some very faint shuffling with muffled laughter that faded to the right, blending with the hiss and rattles of boilers and pots.

When Jeryy turned around, the finder looked up at the towering chef to see their expression upon noticing the missing plate. But when he looked at their hands, he realized Jeryy had been needlessly beating a bowl of oil for the past 60 seconds, and seemed to be smiling just as faintly as he was.

They shared a brief knowing look, or as knowing as the finder felt it was on the other side of Jeryy’s inscrutable glasses. The finder finally gave his eyes a roll and left the line to sit crosslegged on a bench nearby to wait for the next batch as the line behind him fell apart with disappointed mutterings.

Jeryy waved a hand at them all. “Ten more minutes from the oven, and this batch will have whipped cream! Can’t the big kids wait ten minutes, _hmm_?”

 

Just outside the kitchen doors, two young Exorcists were sitting on their heels and shaking with quiet laughter, the slice of cake held above the ground with one hand from each on either side of the plate.

“I can’t believe we did this,” laughed Lenalee, a knuckle to her lips as she tried to stifle her giggles. “We almost dropped it right then and there. Shouldn’t we have just waited on the line like everyone else?”

The redheaded Exorcist next to her grinned cheekily and threw his free arm out in an exaggerated gesture of surprise.

“Wait! On that line? Are you serious?” He wagged a finger at her, shaking his head. “I’ve seen and read all about human conflict and strife, and that line was _absolutely_ something that’ll make it into the Bookman records tonight,” he teased. “The internal conflict that threatened to sunder the Black Order from within: all over a cake!”

“Would that mean that we’ve just infiltrated the enemy’s headquarters?” Lenalee asked with a wobbly poker face. Lavi looked into her eyes, seeing the telltale tilt up at the corners and her slightly pursed lips as she struggled to keep her voice steady. His face splitting grin somehow grew wider yet.

“It would mean,” he said dramatically, lifting the plate with reverence above their heads as he spoke, “that we have recovered a fragment of the enemy’s most important resource, and that it’s your duty as an Exorcist to assist in the study of this resource.”

They both looked at the thick slice of chocolate cake between them, and both immediately perceived the issue presently at hand. The atmosphere deflated a bit.

“We forgot forks, Lavi.”

“Then we’ll eat with our hands.” Lenalee had already reached out and taken a corner of the narrow end of the slice into her hand. She smiled sweetly at him as she waited for him to take a piece of it himself, but laughed when it crumbled in between his fingertips. She popped her piece into her mouth with some relish and closed her eyes happily, “mmm”-ing softly.

Lavi was still smushing the crumbs together into a stickier glob as she took the plate gently out of his hands. He finally managed to mush it all up into a little cakey ball that he rolled into his mouth off his lower lip and gave it a thoughtful chew.

“I’ve been hearing the rumors.” His voice started low and urgent. “‘So decadent, Central should send an inspector to interrogate this sinful, soulful cake’ and ‘death by chocolate’ being some of the better ones. This cake, _this cake_ _belongs_ in the annals of history, Lenalee. I didn’t even taste the upper crust yet!”

“That would have been my fault.” Lenalee raised her hand a bit, admitting to her guilt. But Lavi shook his head “no” vehemently.

“No, you see, it was fully in your right. Now that you’ve analyzed this cake-resource, we understand already what the most important parts to use are, and the schism here has let you claim the upper crust for yourself. But what we need to do, then, is to raid the source. We need more cake!”

“A mission!” Lenalee now raised a fist in the air. “We need cake!”

“We need cake! We need cake!” The two began to chant softly, and Lavi beat his fist rhythmically on an imaginary table. They rose to their feet together, shaking off the pins and needles from kneeling for so long. “We need cake! We need cake!” The two were now dancing on the spot, chanting and marching up and down the narrow stone hallway they had been hiding in. Heads began to poke around the corner from the main passage that this usually led to as the teenagers raised their voices and waved vehemently. “Hey! We need cake! We need cake!”

The distant figures waved back after a few seconds’ pause, and Lavi leapt up with his arms in the air when—

A heavy thud echoed in the small space. The two of them looked down slowly. The dull grinding of the plate rolling away was muffled only partly by the smear of cake along its edge.

A piteous splatter on the ground with one sad little raised knob of cake looked up at them as the plate fell over and clattered noisily to a halt, face down on the ground with a trail of soft cake behind it like a gruesome murder scene. The distant heads had already disappeared from around the corner.

By the time Jeryy poked their head out the back door to the kitchens to see what the noise had been, the Exorcists were already gone. The only traces left of the two of them were the plate placed right-side up on the step beneath the door and a very large stain that smelled strongly of chocolate and sugar.

Distant shouts echoed faintly in the hallway, forgotten and left behind by the ones who uttered them. A blur of green light and orange hair blew by the mouth of the hall, and Jeryy pulled back into the kitchen with another small smile on their lips as a gaggle of harried scientists chased down a distant whirlwind of laughter and light.


	2. Chapter 2

Lenalee set Lavi down outside the door to his room, the both of them laughing breathlessly. His eyepatch seemed to have been the only thing that survived the heavy tousling that the air resistance had given every other inch of him. She couldn’t resist ruffling his mop of tangled red hair back into place, which hung down now that his headband had been blown nearly off of his head. He accepted the ruffling with a dip of his head, and then looked up with a smile at her when her hand dropped to her side.

“I think they seem to think we stole a whole cake,” he said wryly. Lenalee made a sound of agreement, leaning over the railing to check on the progress of the ragtag group of cake-chasers who were making their way up from the lower levels.

“Well, we didn’t steal much of anything,” she murmured. “Especially not after you…” She giggled as she mimicked the motion of Lavi spinning and then swinging down his hammer. “Now they might not even believe us if we show them the stain.”

“Hey, but now they can’t prove anything either, not with that kind of fine handiwork,” Lavi said, copying her motion. He scrunched up the left side of his face and stuck out his tongue, focusing on one point on the ground with his exposed eye. “It didn’t leave so much as a dent in the ground, you—” A screech from behind them interrupted the end of that thought.

“ _LAVIII_ ,” a tall bespectacled bumbling mess thundered as he tried to run up the last flight of stairs faster than his feet could move. “ _What obscene gestures are you teaching Lena_ —“

Lenalee and Lavi looked at each other and with half rolls of their eyes, stepped up onto the railing and leapt off the edge in unison, hand in hand. The groups of their gasping pursuers rushed to the edge in time to watch the two free fall a short distance, and then exit gracefully partway down with a burst of brilliant light from Lenalee’s boots.

Lavi hung back a few seconds to throw a small salute back up to the rest of them all as he trotted backwards. He threw his scarf over his shoulder again to adjust it, but stumbled suddenly as Lenalee caught his hand and broke into a run she must have known he couldn’t keeping pace with. The two of them disappeared, still breathless, further into a different branch of the Order as everyone released the breaths they’d been holding in a collective huff of relief and disappointment. Not a soul was anywhere to be found on that landing ten seconds later when Reever’s strangled shout rose into a fierce bellow:

“WHERE?? WHERE ARE _ALL OF THEM_?”

A bolt ground slowly to click into place in the back door to the kitchens. A few cups of coffee steamed gently on the stoop outside.


	3. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so late, but I hope it was an acceptable present! Here's some stuff I thought about while writing, but I'm getting into (belated)^3 birthday territory, so here it is, as is. Many happy days and weeks and months to come to you, Aniké!

“Hey, Lenalee?”

“Hm?”

“Just so you know, I just did it to test the rumors.”

“Alright, Lavi.”

“No, really. Cake isn’t a Bookman kind of thing, you know. We like protein, meat, stuff for the road and wanderers.”

“Mmhm.”

“Lenalee! Really. Just for the record (which _I_ get to write anyway), it’s not like I _like_ cake. Or that I don’t. The red meat’s just the thing for me. One hundred percent.”

“Did you talk to Kanda about the cake?”

“No! Or, well, maybe I did, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this. There he is, Yuu! What are you doing here at the main gate?”

“Hmph!”

“Where are you going, Kanda?”

“Let’s catch him! Up, up, and away!”

“Get away from me!”

 

Just outside the Black Order’s headquarters, a carriage waited silently in the murky fog. Two stiff guards in vertically striped surcoats stood unmoving and rigid by its door, hands clasped in front of them. The air barely stirred when they breathed, and their eyes were obscured behind identical glasses as they faced the tower without a hint of what was going on within the walls of one of humanity’s last bastions in the war against Destruction.

A gravelly wordless cry and the sound of screeching metal announced the opening of the main gate to the Order. The guards didn’t so much as flinch, their positions already perfectly held. A dark figure emerged at a brisk walk from the ramp down to their level, and as it grew closer, the face of Malcolm C. Rouvelier grew clearer long after they’d identified him (though they’d never tell him) by his crisp brown suit and distinct toothbrush mustache.

He was carrying a briefcase in his hands, but he was holding it like one might a tray. Though neither asked what its contents were, the one that hadn’t opened the door for the Chief Inspector offered to take it for him. That offer was ignored as Rouvelier marched up into the carriage and took a seat wordlessly, waving a hand to signal his readiness for their departure, and then an outturned palm to signal that neither guard was to enter the carriage with him.

Both bowed, then closed and locked the door from outside. Rouvelier waited within for the carriage to shake heavily twice as they both climbed up from outside and sat heavily in the drivers’ seats. As the carriage began to roll forward, his hands slowly slid down the sides of the case lying flat on his lap. When he heard the wheels spinning on the path down from HQ, his thumbs popped open the clasps on either side of the handle and he nearly reverently opened the lid of the case.

Inside, an entire circular chocolate cake, sliced into 10, minus one slice, sat in perfection on the tray of a cake display pan. His eyes seemed to light up, even in the dim lighting, and had anyone been in the coach to witness it, one might even say he smiled in delight. It was a fine, fine cake, and it had really been nothing like anything he’d ever made before. There was some sort of new technique to this, and its chocolatey richness was now his subject to study and crack. He’d heard the rumors, too, though how exactly was his secret to tell.

But before all that…

Rouvelier pulled off his white gloves for the second time that day, folding them and leaving them on the seat next to him. He picked at a slice until it had slid away from the slice directly adjacent to it, and made to lift it onto his other hand, like a plate, when suddenly the entire carriage rocked violently. His jaws parted slightly in horror as the slice jerked from where he held it at the end and rolled over the rest of the cake and out of the case, onto the floor of the coach. A soft, wet splat sound that only he could hear signaled the demise of his newfound treasure, and only crumbs and a mess were left in his grasp.

 _We serve a cruel and capricious God, don't we?_ he thought bitterly, spilling the crumblings from his hand into the case. He slowly and deliberately, dusted them off, slid his hands up the sides of the lid, and then slammed it down, hearing the clasps catch with the force of his motion. He put his gloves back on, almost muttering under his breath foully, and thought carefully of what to tell the footmen when he reached the next leg of his journey back to Central.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of things that might have been unclear, or things I didn't explain properly:  
> \- Jeryy baked a variation on a flourless chocolate cake, decades ahead of the first recorded publications of actual flourless chocolate cakes in the NYT and other magazines in the 1950's. The texture is described as "like a cheesecake, where chocolate has replaced the creamy cheesecake" or something like that.  
> \- Kanda had been tailing Rouvelier, who'd snuck into HQ for the cake there had been rumors about.  
> \- Lavi flattened their dropped cake slice finely, managing not to smash a hole in the building for once on a swing of his hammer.  
> \- Reever hasn't slept in probably a week and he's ready to kill once he finds Komui and makes him spill how he escaped.  
> \- Komui breaks into the kitchen anyway to hide using a magnetic bolt breaker he or someone else invented for the finders to use. Jeryy takes him in, poor thing, and lets him lick the chocolate stirring spoon and sleep in the back. Reever eventually joins him, somewhat reluctantly but too worn out not to.  
> \- Toma was the finder? Did anyone care.  
> \- I haven't written a fic in literally years, thanks for reading to here!  
> \- I've also never actually eaten a flourless cake. ; -;

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really sorry! I haven't written anything in so long... but I never finish a drawing.  
> Happy birthday, Aniké! I hope you don't mind this butchering of some of your hc/dgmtext posts... @ v@;;


End file.
